This year’s March Madness has brought us a Final Four with no #1 or #2 seeds, unique in NCAA tournament history. But the absence of high-seed teams has not dulled enthusiasm for the last three games. In fact, some sports pundits are trumpeting the “Cinderella” factor: can a #11 seed, Virginia Commonwealth University, pull off [...]
Category Archives: Science/Math
Thinking About Artificial Intelligence
September 20, 2010 – 1:09 pm
What is life? Or consciousness? Or intelligence? Or self-awareness? Are we spiritual beings or meat machines? As a result of advances in computer technology, these eternal questions will soon (long before this century is over, IMO) be explored in ways that go further and deeper than religion, philosophy, and literature have done before. I am [...]
Anthropocene: What’s in a Name?
May 24, 2010 – 3:10 pm
Geological epochs are defined by the major events that separate them, as when green algae in primeval seas put oxygen into the atmosphere and made animal life on earth possible. Has human technology become one of these epoch-defining events? Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer who is aware and knowledgeable about the discussions and [...]
Betting the Final Four–2010
March 30, 2010 – 9:16 pm
If you bet on the Final Four (or on almost anything), the bookie’s odds always include a built-in percentage for the house. Last year I calculated the Las Vegas Final Four edge at 9.8%. This year the edge is so big (20.8%) that something must be wrong!
Chilean Earthquake Energy
February 27, 2010 – 12:43 pm
This morning’s devastating earthquake in Chile (8.8 on the Richter scale) had an energy equivalent of approximately 15.8 gigatons of TNT (31,600,000,000,000 lbs). To put that in perspective, it is about as much energy as would be released by 300 of the largest thermonuclear bombs ever built (the USSR’s Tsar Bomba, detonated in Novaya Zemlya [...]
Blue Moon Bloops
January 2, 2010 – 5:22 pm
According to almost every online source that commented on it, the round disk in the sky on the last day of 2009 was a “blue moon,” a term commonly used for the second full moon in any calendar month. Commonly—and erroneously. The internet offers near-instant access to information. It is ironic that in some cases [...]
AltaRock Abandons Geothermal Energy Project at The Geysers
December 18, 2009 – 12:15 am
Since July, I have been studying and following the progress of a technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) as it has been tested by Sausalito-based AltaRock Energy at The Geysers, an active geothermal field just 12 air miles from my home in Northern California. A week ago, New York Times reporter James Glanz wrote that [...]
Pictures of Saturn
October 28, 2009 – 5:04 pm
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, orbiting Saturn, has sent back some astounding photographs from a distance of nearly one billion miles. Click here for a couple of dozen that will amaze and intrigue. The waves in Saturn’s A ring are formed by the gravitational pull of tiny moon Daphnis, the bright dot (only 5 miles in diameter) [...]
Is the Production of Geothermal Energy in The Geysers a “Public Nuisance”?
September 27, 2009 – 10:21 am
Calpine in The Geysers On September 15, less than a fortnight after AltaRock Energy halted its geothermal drilling in The Geysers, the Anderson Springs Community Alliance (ASCA), a small but formidable opponent of the AltaRock project, fired another salvo: this time charging the area’s main producer of geothermal energy with a public nuisance. In a [...]
Enhanced Geothermal Energy Project Halted in The Geysers
September 3, 2009 – 8:37 pm
Electricity generation in The Geysers Late in 2008, George Bush’s Department of Energy committed $6 million to Sausalito-based AltaRock Energy (as part of a consortium…see addendum below) for energy production using Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). EGS technology works by by injecting water down a deep well into hot rock, fracturing the rock and creating steam [...]
